SUPPORTING THE ARABIC LANGUAGE IN DOMAIN NAMES

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Supporting The Arabic Language in Domain Names October 2003 Islamic Republic of Comoros Republic of Djibouti Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Democratic Republic of Sudan Syria Arab Republic Somalia Democratic Republic جيبوتي جيبوتي جيبوتي جي dj سعودية السعودية سعودي سع sa سودان السودان سودان ي سد sd سورية سورية سوري سر sy صومال الصومال صوما لي صو so Republic of Iraq iq عر عراق Sultanate of Oman Palestine ps فل فلسطين State of Qatar qa قط قطر Stat of Kuwait kw آو آويت Lebanese Republic Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Arab Republic of Egypt Kingdom of Morocco Islamic Republic of Mauritania Yemen Arab Republic عراق العراق ي عمان عمان عمان ي عم om ي فلسطين فلسطين ي ق طر قطر ي الكويت آويت لبنان لبنان لبنان ي لب lb ليبيا ليبيا ليبي لي ly مصر مصر مص ري مص eg مغرب المغرب مغر بي مغ ma موريتاني ا موريتاني ا موريتاني مو mr يمن اليمن يمن ي يم ye 3.1.3. Results of the Study These suggested Arabic gTLDs and ccTLDs were studied and compared using the following criteria [18]: 1. Length of the Arabic TLDs. 2. Coherence and Clarity of the Arabic TLDs, .i.e., how much easy to associate an Arabic TLD with its corresponding category. 3. Linguistic structure of the Arabic domain name, i.e., consistency with the Arabic language. 4. Easiness of pronunciation of the Arabic TLDs. 5. Future expansion of more Arabic TLDs (i.e., extendibility). Additional two factors were used, for comparing Arabic ccTLDs, namely: 6. Undesirable code for Arabic ccTLDs. This factor indicates whether the proposed Arabic ccTLDs introduce undesirable Arabic words. This is particularly if arbitrary combination of Arabic characters is used to produce an Arabic ccTLD. 7. The easy of reaching consensus among the involved parties (e.g., Arab countries). A. Al-Zoman Page 12 out of 17
Supporting The Arabic Language in Domain Names October 2003 Here are some major points from the study: • With respect to the length of the proposed Arabic gTLDs and ccTLDs it is obvious that using single letter for a gTLD and 2-letter country code for ccTLD give the best score. • Arabic gTLDs that are based on full words are much clearer than Arabic gTLDs that are based only on single letters. For example, the full Arabic word " ‏"شبكة is much clearer than just a single letter ‏"ك"‏ for representing the category "network". • Most of the proposed Arabic gTLDs are basically based on one-to-one translation of the English gTLDs either using full words or single letters, which might not suite the Arabic language. This means that the name of the entity comes before its category (i.e., gTLD). For example, the domain name of "the food and agriculture organization (fao)" is "fao.org"; the actual name and the domain name both have the entity type (organization/org) at the end. However, for the proposed Arabic gTLDs particularly the use of full words presents unpleasant structure of a domain name from linguistic point of view. For example, Table (IV) depicts examples of some Arabic domain names in which the Arabic linguistic structure of domain names is sound awkward. Table IV: Example of some Arabic Domain Names Entity name Type Arabic domain name اتحاد السباحة العربي ‏(منظمة)‏ org اتحاد-السباحة-العربي.‏ منظمة شرآة الأمانة ‏(شرآة)‏ com الأمانة شرآة الشبكة العربية للمعلومات ‏(شبكة)‏ net عربية شبكة • Pronouncing single letters or full words much easer than word roots. • Using single letters is limited to 28 possible Arabic gTLDs because there are only 28 letters in the Arabic character set. Using word roots has little limitation in which multiple words may give the same root, e.g., the following words: " ‏"تعليم and " ‏"إعلام have the same root ‏."علم"‏ While using full words virtually has no limitation. • It has been found that using Arabic full words for gTLDs is more suitable for the Arabic language. This is because they are straightforward to relate to the corresponding categories and easy to pronounce. • With respect to the proposed Arabic ccTLDs, it has been found that using the Arabic standard for country codes would be the easiest and fastest way to reach agreements among the concerned parties. Also, it is quite comprehensive which include most of the world's countries. This is said despite its shortcoming of having some unpleasant codes. Enhancement to the standard to overcome this problem can be done for certain country ‏."قطر " and ‏"مصر " example, codes to become three letters rather than two letters. For However, from pure linguistic point of view, the use of nationality (the second proposal) would be recommended. 3.2. Open Issues Most of the proposed Arabic gTLDs are basically based on one-to-one translation of the English gTLDs either using full words or single letters. They are based on the activities of the entities (i.e., commercial, government, education) which might not suite the Arabic language. This is due to the fact that the entity category in Arabic (i.e., منظمة ، ...) comes in front of the entity name and not at the end. Hence, this leads to creating awkward Arabic domain names. . . شرآة A. Al-Zoman Page 13 out of 17
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SUPPORTING THE ARABIC LANGUAGE IN DOMAIN NAMES

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